


Du Temps Perdu

by Stakebait



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-11
Updated: 2010-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley and Buffy learn from Angel's example.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Du Temps Perdu

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel/epilogue to Loose Ends, my Wesficathon story. Loose Ends can stand alone without this one, but this one doesn't make sense without reading that one first. This is also a response to minim_calibre's Leonard Cohen challenge.

_"May everyone live,  
And may everyone die.  
Hello, my love,  
And my love, Goodbye." -- Leonard Cohen_

The coffee grinder whirred. Fresh beans, the kind of luxury Wolfram and Hart got you addicted to fast, until it was like oxygen, unnoticed and impossible to give up.

Then again, Angel was never much for the breathing.

There was a long rustling murmur of paper tearing and unfolding, drawers closing. Running water thudding into the steel sink like heavy footsteps, the burble of pouring water on a rising note. A grumbling purr, and a high hum, and finally the soft drip, drip, plash.

Why had Buffy never realized before how loud making coffee was? She'd heard softer gunshots. Buffy stared at the baby monitor, incongruous in the middle of Wesley's leather blotter. Dying had been much, much faster than this.

Buffy gripped Wesley's hand. There was the soft sucking noise of a man inhaling steam for the pure pleasure of warmth, and then a pause, and then a swallow.

Buffy let her breath out. "You could go in, Wes. He'll have forgotten... all that stuff you told me by now." Wesley's betrayal, or failure at least. Angel's decision. And his son.

Wesley shook his head. "He'd still remember you," he offered in turn. He didn't look at her, but out the window over her head, where pigeons pecked and squabbled on the ledge.

Buffy listened to another decades-long swallow and nodded. "By now he might not even remember that he ever left me."

But she didn't move, and Wesley didn't let go of her fingers. She wondered if he would really have let go if she had pulled away, or if he was only testing or taunting her. She wondered if she'd been doing the same.

As long as she was on the wondering kick, Buffy wondered what would happen if Angel forgot about the soul, forgot about the murders he'd committed, forgot to feel guilty, forgot he was a vampire at all. Unlikely, considering how much river water she'd had to swallow just to lose five years. They had to have dumped at least that much in the back of the coffee maker, though, which meant whatever else he had or hadn't forgotten, Angel didn't remember either of them at all.

She wondered if this was mercy, or revenge. She'd never thought, when she was young, it would be so hard to tell the two apart.

"Hello? Where am I?" came Angel's voice from the monitor, unexpectedly clear and close. Buffy wrenched the volume knob so fast and hard it came off in her hand.

"Did we do the right thing?" Buffy asked Wesley. Can this ever be the right thing? She remembered Willow slumped on the bathroom floor, her face twisted with tears.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. We did what he would have done." Wesley's grip turned her knuckles white. But he didn't turn away from the window.


End file.
